


Tsar Batman Uchiha the Terrible

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Series: numbers written on coffee cups [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe-Modern Setting, Dave and Karkat are fucking dorks thank you goodbye, M/M, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 02:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6220321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dave just cannot introduce himself properly, and Karkat is just so, incredibly, done with his new client's bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tsar Batman Uchiha the Terrible

Karkat Vantas knew three things for certain. One, he was well on the way to developing a worrying coffee dependency. Two, his job fucking sucked. Three, the reason for both his steadily growing addiction and shitty life was standing right in front of him, smirking.

"Name," Karkat growled. Feferi liked to tell him, frequently, that the customer was always right. She got very excited about the whole 'customer service' thing. Karkat wasn't so convinced. He knew, objectively, that there did exist clients who deserved the whole sugar and roses treatment, but as of Present Karkat's moment of time they'd yet to be introduced.

They also definitely didn't include the asshole who had just ordered a caramel frappuccino and was now staring pensively into space.

"Batman," he said after a few more minutes of introspection.

Karkat glared. "Batman? Are you serious? You have got to be fu-you have got to be kidding me."

"Dude, calm down," said asshole stranger, "I'm totally serious."

It was winter. He was wearing sunglasses inside. He was always wearing sunglasses inside. Karkat had yet to meet someone who could pull off sunglasses inside who wasn't the scum of the earth.

"Calm down? You just told me your name was Batman! Yesterday it was Tsar Ivan the Terrible!"

"I thought it was Tsar Peter the Great? Ivan the Terrible was months ago."

"Last week it was Sasuke Uchiha!"

"Yeah, that one was pretty good. Peter the Great was a low point. I dunno, he doesn't really sound that Russian, you know? Or that intimidating. It's like, you're great, sure, but that's to be expected, you're the ruler of motherfucking Imperial Russia, and you've gotta be pretty badass for that. But what else are you? What're your defining personality traits? Like, do you impale people? Do you bathe in the blood of young virgins? Wait, she was Hungarian..."

Karkat pointed to the sign above the counter, written in flowery fuchsia cursive and accompanied by way, way too many exclamation marks. "We have a no-swearing policy."

Tsar Peter the Great's face fell. Karkat was extremely pissed off by how the look seemed to pull on the very strings of his heart, burrowing inside his flesh, up his veins towards his heart, until his entire body seemed to be one massive ache. Or maybe the feeling was irritation. Karkat's entire body was a ball of irritation. Yeah, that one made a lot more sense.

"Shit, dude, sorry," Ivan the Terrible said. "Wait, fuck! Ah, screw it."

"You are literally the worst. At everything. It's almost like two of the biggest fuck-ups in the world came together and said 'hey, look, we're pretty fucking useless at every-fucking-thing ever, right?' 'Hey, that's true! You're a motherfucking genius, fuck-up number one!' 'Yeah, so, cos we're just so fucking awful, why don't we get together to create the world's biggest fuck-up! Times two! The world's biggest fuck-up squared!' 'What a fucking brilliant idea, fellow fuck-up! Why don't we mix our genetic material together in a bucket right fucking now! How's that for genius?' You're literally the result of the combination of fuck-up and even bigger fuck-up, combined with asshole in the form of genetic seasoning."

"Wow. Dude, do you like, practice your insults? In front of a mirror or something? Cos wow, that was actually mesmerising. So long. So detailed."

"Shut up, Sasuke Uchiha."

"Yeah, also you just swore way more than I ever did."

Karkat cursed, this time internally. It was a small miracle in the train-wreck of his professional career that Feferi wasn't around to hear, and that the only customer was Gamzee, who was probably too stoned to even remember that Russia was a country. Karkat kinda felt bad for the guy, and in a different timeline would have given him a free slice of cake or something, but right now he had bigger things to worry about.

Like the caramel frappuccino he still had to make before Batman the Terrible could leave. And Batman's decision to stay and watch and generally be a grade A asshole while Karkat tried to find the cream.

"So, is this your full-time job? Do you go to Sburb? I haven't seen you around. Actually, why is it even called Sburb? Kind of a weird name for a university. I dunno, probably something to do with that Peixes woman, seems like she'd think it was a normal name for a university."

Karkat sighed and neglected to mention that 'that Peixes woman's' daughter was technically his boss. And actually kind of a close friend. It was complicated. And fucked-up. "Please don't tell me you live near here."

"Yup," asshole stranger said, popping the p.

"Someone kill me," Karkat muttered, handing Tsar Sasuke Uchiha his drink. "And now please get the fuck out of my coffee shop."

* * *

 

The next time Karkat saw the many-named sunglasses-clad stranger was too fucking soon. It also ended up in him with a number scrawled on his coffee cup, a lot of questions he didn't actually want, and absolutely no answers.

When he'd been given a job at Her Imperious Coffee-shop, Feferi had told Karkat that he could help himself whenever he wanted to anything he wanted, as long as it wasn't too much. Karkat found that exponentially stupid, considering the literal impossibility of measuring too much as long as it was in the employee's ability to decide. He never actually took any of it except to sometimes dump a slice of cake by Gamzee's pathetic ass, because despite what Feferi said, her coffee just wasn't that good.

So Karkat generally wound down after his sociology class at a small coffee shop the other side of town. Terezi had recommended it, saying she knew one of the baristas. He was, and none of these were Karkat's own words, ' a pretty cool kid'.

Knowing his own luck, he should have expected Terezi's barista friend to be Tsar Batman. It was just another slap in the face from paradox space in a long list of slaps in faces from different kinds of spaces.

Karkat thought. Leaving was a viable option. He could come back when Terezi was not talking to assholes and get coffee somewhere else and never have to order coffee from someone who regularly introduced himself as dead Russian emperors. Or he could stay, not embarrass his best friend, and get his favourite hot beverage.

He sighed and walked up to the counter.

"Next!" Tsar Asshole said. Karkat gritted his teeth, steeled himself. He took several deep breaths; there was no reason to get irrationally angry already. Mr Sunglasses hadn't even said anything yet.

Karkat was really resenting the asshole's apparent ability to annoy people just by existing. It would almost be impressive, if it wasn't so pathetic. And annoying.

"For fuck's sake! Medium cappuccino," he muttered.

"Hey, read the sign. No swearing here either."

The board here was written in bright green and decorated in smiley faces. Whoever wrote it would apparently get along with Feferi.

"Anyway," Mr Uchiha said. "Name?"

Karkat opened his mouth and then closed it again. He was trapped. Either he decided to play this asshole's game and fail, because there was no way he could come up with so incredibly awful pseudonyms, or he could just fail without even trying.

"Dude, you can introduce yourself as Buzz Lightyear if you want, I'm not gonna judge."

Karkat sighed. "Karkat," he muttered.

"Wait, is that your real name?" his awful, awful barista asked.

Karkat saw the faintest glimmer of hope. He shrugged. "Maybe."

"Nice."

Asshole Barista passed the cup down to his co-worker, a blonde girl wearing a purple hairband and a smirk. Karkat took it from her without a word, fully intending to never, ever, see anyone obsessed with dead Russian rulers again.

He looked down at his coffee. Right under his name, written in scrawling red lower-case, was a string of numbers. He looked back at the counter. Karkat was pretty sure that, if there hadn't been a pair of sunglasses in the equation, the town's resident asshole and his apparent love interest would have winked. Like Karkat said, literal fuck-up.

**Author's Note:**

> Dave only gave Karkat his number like that because he's way too shy to do it properly. Also it is one day my dream to walk into a coffee shop and order something as tsar Ivan the Terrible.


End file.
